text:
The Theater of Alain Badiou[1]
The essay that follows emerged from my long-standing interest in the relation between theater and philosophy. As someone who has spent a lot of time doing both, I have always been convinced that the mutual hostility between theater and philosophy, with philosophers attacking the theater as corrupting and false and thespians shunning abstract ideas as irrelevant, was only part of the story. In order to tell the fuller story, one in which theater and philosophy were shown to be deeply entangled with each other, I needed to start with Plato, who was often seen as the first philosopher hostile to the theater. It was in the course of looking for allies in this undertaking that I turned to Alain Badiou. Two things struck me about his thought: unlike most twentieth-century and twenty-first century philosophers, Badiou went back to Plato (rather than presenting himself as an anti-Platonist); and his interest in Plato was part of a fascination with theater. Putting the two things together, I began to consider Badiou a "dramatic Platonist," as I put it in The Drama of Ideas, the book in which I tried to capture a double history of theater and philosophy.[2]
Around this time, I was lucky enough to end up on a podium with Badiou, at an event hosted by New York University. With some trepidation, I seized the opportunity to ask him during my response whether he agreed with my description of him as a "dramatic Platonist." He paused, reflected, and burst out with his characteristic giggly laughter. To my relief, he finished the outburst with an enthusiastic "yes."
What does this have to do with architecture? Badiou has not written much about architecture, and yet his thought has fascinating implications for architecture; this, no doubt, is the motivation behind the present publication. I had occasion to think about these implications a few years ago, when Ariane Lourie Harrison invited me to talk about Alain Badiou at the Yale School of Architecture. Talking about a philosopher at Yale is, of course, nothing out of the ordinary. The Yale School of Architecture has long been associated with a particularly intellectual approach to the trade, for example through which figures as Peter Eisenman, one of Ariane Harrison's mentors. Ariane Harrison herself is deeply interested in the performing arts, since her atelier, co-founded with her husband Seth Harrison, has specialized in relation between architecture and the performing arts. During the conversation with Ariane Harrison and her students, it became clear to all of us that Badiou's understanding of theater was in fact an excellent way of approaching architecture.
The word theater comes from the Greek theatron which describes not an art form, nor a genre or a type of entertainment. Rather, it describes a designed space, a piece of architecture: a 'place of seeing'. A theatron is a space designed to allow one group of people to watch an event performed by another group of people. This designed space or building is the medium within which particular acts of theater are performed and watched.
When I teach theater history, I always begin with this architectural origin of theater in the large open-air theaters of Greece before moving on to the full-fledged theater buildings in the Renaissance and then to our own intimate theaters and theatrical activities taking place outside traditional theater spaces. For me, the most crucial part of this history is the raised stage, which begins in Rome and reaches its zenith in the nineteenth century: the raised stage lifts theatrical events off the ground and allows dramatists, actors, and directors to manipulate space at will.[3]
In Badiou's understanding of theater, the physical arrangement of space does not receive much explicit attention, but it forms the basis for his understanding of theater. He begins by noting our current fascination with materiality, which he diagnoses as a belief system that posits bodies and languages as the only building blocks from which the world is composed. This is our materialist assumption in most things, but it is particularly strong in the theater. The theater, we are always told, is an art of the body. It is a doctrine that is presented with a considerable amount of enthusiasm: what's great about the theater is its physicality. This usually means first of all the physicality of actors, who stand there, in the flesh, on stage. But this fascination with materiality can be extended to the audience, which is assembled, also in the flesh, in the place of seeing. I might add that these two physical or material entities are made possible by a third, namely the physical space of the theater.
This is our current description of theater, and it is precisely this description that Badiou criticizes, or rather critically supplements, with an addition: yes, he admits, there are only bodies and languages; except that there are also truths. That addition changes everything, or almost everything. In the theater, this means that the actors' bodies are shot through with ideas. And not just the actors' bodies; the entire theater becomes nothing but a theater of ideas, in his memorable and provocative phrase.
I would argue that what Badiou says about bodies in the theater and the physical, material reality of the theater can be extended to architecture. Architecture, even more so than theater, is the most material art form (I know this first hand because my father was an architect and took me to many construction sites when I was growing up). With Badiou, one might say that this materiality should not lead us to think of architecture as yet another art form of the body. Rather, we should say that yes, in architecture there are only bodies and (architectural) languages; except there are also truths. This means that the material out of which architecture is made does not rest in its materiality; it is shot through with ideas. For Badiou, the conclusion would be clear: all architecture is an architecture of ideas.
Throughout its history, philosophy has used the theater in two ways. The dominant way is as a model of representation. Here the theater creates the distinction between appearance and truth. The origin of this model is, of course, Plato's parable of the cave in book VII of the Republic, which presents a puppet-master creating visual and auditory effects for the benefit of an imprisoned audience.[4] This shadow theater must be abandoned in order for an upper realm of truth to be accessed, as happens when a prisoner escapes to the real world above. Theater, in other words, stands for illusion in contrast to philosophical truth: in order for philosophy to occur, we must leave the theater behind.
The cave paradigm has had a profound impact on the relation between philosophy and theater. Theater studies has tended to view this impact as negative; the theater, after all, is cast as the villain in this drama of illusion and truth, prison and escape. Jonas Barish has summed up this conventional wisdom by coining the term "anti-theatrical prejudice".[5] In the meantime, however, dramatists returned to Plato's cave with a very different set of interests. Rather than holding it responsible for fostering a 'prejudice', they recognized it as what it really was: a moment when Plato's philosophy avails itself of the resources of the theater. The cave parable – with its gothic shadows and ominous sounds, and the suggestion of lifelong bondage in an underground dungeon – is itself the product of a dramatic and theatrical imagination of the highest order. Into this carefully elaborated scene is then dropped the plot of the freed prisoner, his dramatic experiences in the upper world, the painful process of getting used to the sun, and then, at the climax, the descent back into the cave, where he and his news of the upper world are greeted first with laughter and finally with violence.
Refusing to dismiss this tragic drama as prejudice, dramatists of various ilk have adapted this parable to the stage. The British composer Alexander Goehr, for example, composed a chamber opera called "Shadowplay" in which a tenor sings the text of the parable only to be joined by a prisoner who enacts, in front of our very eyes, the drama of escape and ascent.[6] Another adaptation of the cave parable can be found in Howard Brenton's "Bloody Poetry", a play set among the Romantic writers Bysshe and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and their entourage on Lake Geneva. In a central scene, the group decides to 'do' the cave parable and proceeds to enact this scene.[7] Byron's pedantic biographer is forced to play the prisoner, the overbearing Lord Byron is demoted to playing the minor role of Glaucon, while Mary Shelley takes on the part of Socrates. The stage directions elaborate just how the cave and the shadows are transposed to the space of the stage: a chandelier is placed at the front of the stage representing the source of light, the fire. The chandelier merely 'represents' the fire because the stage direction makes it clear that in truth it is the footlights that cast the characters' shadows on the back of the stage: the stage props are replaced by the real stage, and the parable by the theater. More recently, the cave has been appropriated by film, and in much the same manner. The Truman Show, for example, creates the shadow cave as a reality show in which a child, purchased by the television company, grows up in a carefully set up all-American town, only to discover slowly that everyone else is merely playing a role.[8] In this case, when the prisoner finally ascends from his constructed world, he moves from his brightly lit cave to the darkness of the control room above; Plato's crucial difference between darkness and light is thus inverted. The conclusion to be drawn from these theatrical adaptations of the cave parable is that far from being merely the cause of a hostile relation between philosophy and theater, the parable constitutes a genuine encounter between philosophy and theater, a moment when philosophy needs the theater and uses it in a carefully elaborated manner. Small wonder, then, that the theater has responded in kind by adapting the parable's theatrical matrix to the stage.
Besides the cave paradigm, however, there exists a second model for the relation between philosophy and theater, one that is more difficult to capture: the use of drama as a paradigm for philosophy understood as act or action. In this second paradigm, there is nothing illusory or false about the theater; instead it becomes a model for philosophy as something that happens in the manner of an act or event. Interestingly enough, this second model can also be traced back to Plato, though not to a particular scene or terminology as is the case with the cave parable and its language of (theatrical) illusion and (philosophical) truth. Rather it is to be found in Plato's use of the dramatic form of the philosophical dialogue, which implies a conception of philosophy as an act executed by agents in a series of arguments. This is just a way of stating the obvious, perhaps, although the obvious in this case has not always been recognized: Plato invents characters, places them in scenes, and has them enact particular philosophically driven actions, or plots. Philosophy is not something that occurs in the privacy of your own mind, but something that is done, acted out in particular scenes and interactions. Borrowing a term from another theatrical philosopher, Kenneth Burke, I will call this second paradigm 'dramatism', since Burke used drama as a paradigm for a philosophical scheme centered on agents, actions, and the purpose of action.
The dramatic form of the philosophical dialogue embodies the classical understanding of philosophy as intimately tied to conduct, habits and actions rather than to a set of doctrines or beliefs. If you believe that philosophy has to do with the actions of agents, you find yourself in the realm of drama. Only on occasion have modern philosophers continued this dramatic understanding of Plato's philosophy. A notable, and in some respects surprising, exception was Michel Foucault, not a philosopher generally recognized for his interest in drama and theater. This, however, changed notably in the lectures given at the Collège de France during the last years of his life.[9] Devoted to the Greek term parrhesia, or truth-telling, Foucault elaborates the dramatic coordinates of this understanding of philosophy by differentiating his 'dramatic' analysis of philosophical truth from J.L. Austin's theory of 'performative' speech acts.[10] Foucault's last lectures, which also contain fascinating discussions of Greek tragedy and the death of Socrates, have yet to be discovered by theater studies; once they are translated into English (they appeared in France only in 2008 and 2009 respectively) this will hopefully change.
While modern philosophers have rarely paid attention to this dramatic (or dramatistic) dimension of philosophy, there exists a long and remarkable tradition of playwrights who recognized Plato's dialogues as a dramatic form and decided to follow suit. I have so far found over a hundred plays, written since the Renaissance, centered on the philosopher Socrates and adapted, more or less directly, from Plato's dialogues. Often these playwrights combined the material from the most theatrically vivid dialogues, such as the Symposium and the Phaedo, or found other ways of portraying the remarkable actions of this quintessential philosopher and the characters with whom Plato had surrounded him. While not a major force in the history of drama, these Socrates plays, as I call them, pay homage to Plato as a dramatist.
Among the living philosophers, no one stands more clearly at the intersection of theater and philosophy than Alain Badiou, whose significance for the study of theater cannot be overestimated. In the context of this essay, his importance lies in the fact that he moves between the various traditions and models outlined above. In line with the dramatistic model, for example, Badiou writes, "for me, philosophical theatricality indicates that the essence of philosophy […] is an act".[11] At the same time he holds on to the classical philosophical search for truth, precisely the term that organizes the cave parable in which theater is used as a locus of falsehood. Badiou's twin conceptions of philosophy as act and as truth are in the service of a new Platonism. His call for a return to Plato even includes the demand that "we can, we must write for our contemporaries, Republics and Symposiums."[12] Uniquely among contemporary philosophers, Badiou brings together the cave model and the dramatistic model and traces both of them back to Plato.
What Badiou cares most about when he calls for a return to Plato is the continuation of philosophy as an independent discipline. It is this integrity of philosophy, he feels, that has been under threat throughout the last one-hundred-fifty years, during which time philosopher after philosopher has declared the end of metaphysics and therefore the end of philosophy as it had been instituted by Plato. Friedrich Nietzsche's attack on Platonism is the most famous example of this tradition of seeking to end philosophy, but Badiou also includes Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida.[13] Declaring the end of (Platonist) metaphysics, Badiou argues, comes at too steep a price, and he measures this price in terms of Plato: it means ceding philosophy to its enemies, the sophists and other relativists; it means giving up that which has distinguished philosophy from sophistry, namely the category of truth.[14] It is important to recognize that Badiou is not an idealist in the sense of asserting the existence of concrete universals. For him, reversing anti-Platonism is a way of staying true to the project of philosophy itself, "philosophy as it was instituted by Plato".[15] And that project cannot do without the concept of truth. Once philosophy gives up truth, it reverts to sophistry, relativism, the description of an ever-changing world. Badiou identifies with Plato when he watches modern anti-Platonist philosophy tear down Plato's bulwark against relativism. Philosophical self-critique is all well and good, but modern anti-Platonism has thrown out the baby with the bathwater, ensuring the death of philosophy in the process.
The philosopher who represents, for Badiou, an intriguing version of this anti-Platonist tendency is Gilles Deleuze. Drawing on Nietzsche among others, Deleuze had positioned his own philosophy of the multiple against Plato, making anti-Platonism the center of his method. In many ways, Deleuze is the perfect example of what happens when you declare Platonist metaphysics to be over: all that is left to do is to celebrate contingency, immanence, heterogeneity and endless series of differences, reveling in the sheer groundlessness of all thinking: "Deleuze is the cheerful thinker of the confusion of the world," Badiou writes, who offers "an immense description, a collection of today's diversity".[16] Deleuze is the thinker of bodies, of endlessly differing identities, of machines, of matter in its myriad forms, a Dionysian thinker of the multiple, the thinker who identified his own writing with the project of a 'reversal of Platonism'. Deleuze, of course, was himself a philosopher deeply engaged with the theater, especially in his 1968 early work Difference and Repetition,[17] which celebrates the theater as an art form prone to disrupt the principle of identity and difference on which idealist philosophy had staked so much.[18] Indeed, Foucault gave Deleuze's book a rave review, speaking about his conception of a theatrical philosophy as one immersed in bodies and screams. Theater here functions very much along the lines of the cave paradigm, only now it is the bodies, not the ideas, that are valued above all.[19]
Without discussing this theatrical dimension of the debate, Badiou proceeds to the second step in his argument, namely that in reversing Plato, Deleuze has left Platonism more or less intact. Yes, Badiou declares, Deleuze enjoys his bodies, multiplicities, minor languages and endless series of differences, but behind this immense mobilization of difference lurks the same old distinction between appearance and essence first made in Plato's cave parable. The only difference is that Deleuze enjoys the multiple appearances of shadows on the wall and feels little desire to turn around and leave the cave. Deleuze does not dismantle the Platonist distinction between appearance and essence, but merely changes the values assigned to them, favoring the ever-changing world of appearance over the Platonic ascent to the realm of ideas. The same argument can be made with respect to other anti-Platonists, since it speaks to a danger almost invariably associated with reversal: reversing Platonism leaves the distinction between cave and upper world in place and only reverses the values associated with it. In a way, modern philosophy has never stopped paying homage to the cave, even if it has tended to do so by means of reversal.
The surprising twist in this interpretation of Deleuze occurs in a third argument: Deleuze starts out as Platonist in reverse, but he ends up being a Platonist in disguise. It turns out that behind Deleuze's fascination with the multiple lurks, as a foil, a conception of the one. Badiou lists many passages in which Deleuze relates multiplicities to a transcendent notion of unity and oneness. There is a singularity to Deleuze's notion of being, for example. Here Badiou argues that Deleuze's philosophy is a 'classical' one, and this means that it is a "metaphysics of Being and of foundation".[20] This is even more true of Deleuze's other central category, borrowed from Henri Bergson: time. Time is the foundation of Deleuze's philosophy, that which guarantees that the world of wild differences can nevertheless yield a conception of truth. Badiou's bravura reading of Deleuze, counterintuitive as it might seem at first, is not to be dismissed out of hand even if it also betrays Badiou's own Platonist philosophy, which here manifests itself as a reinterpretation of one of Plato's greatest foes of the late twentieth century.
If anti-Platonism is one target for Badiou's approach, the other is language philosophy. Badiou recognizes the focus on language as one of the dominant strains within twentieth-century philosophy and one of the chief opponents of any kind of Platonism, especially insofar as it presumes that all thinking is determined by the medium of language (whether conceived as speech or as writing). Earlier philosophies had understood language to be one of the fields of philosophical inquiry among others, but language philosophy claims that since philosophy is crucially determined by language, all philosophy must become a philosophy of language.
For Badiou, the main problem with language philosophy is that it replaces the question of truth with that of meaning. Posed against a (Deleuzian) philosophy of the body and a (Wittgensteinian) philosophy of language, Badiou summarizes the cornerstones of his philosophy in his Logics of Worlds with the following formula: "there are only bodies and languages".[21] Even as he thus recognizes, with this assertion, the achievements of a philosophy of the body and of language, Badiou supplements that assertion with a crucial addition: "There are only bodies and languages, except that there are truths."[22] The body–language doctrine, Badiou argues, can be traced back to the Sophists and their (relativistic) declaration that 'Man is the measure of all things'. Badiou understands truth to work against such anthropomorphic relativism. Truth is what takes the philosopher outside the human realm, indeed it 'dislocates', as Badiou puts it with respect to truth in the Republic.[23] At another moment he says that "truths exist as exceptions to what there is," as an interruption of the continuity of bodies and languages.[24]
So far, Badiou's resuscitation of Plato takes place within the frame of the first paradigm of the cave: modern philosophy is anti-Platonist in that it has abandoned truth and thus the possibility of the world above, contenting itself with the theater of shadows and words below. Only the most astute anti-Platonists, such as Deleuze, pay grudging homage to Plato by being not so much Platonists in reverse as Platonists in disguise. But it takes a reader such as Badiou to ferret out the Platonist overtones in the celebration of shadows, bodies and languages current in much twentieth-century philosophy.
Folded into this critique of anti-Platonism, however, we find Badiou availing himself of the second, dramatistic paradigm, the understanding of philosophy as (dramatic) act. The key term here is 'event', which Badiou first developed in Being and Event and further elaborated in Logics of Worlds and several other texts.[25] For example, when, in the quote above, Badiou speaks of truth as an exception, he has in mind his definition of the event, which is always an exceptional occurrence. With the notion of the event, we arrive at the center of Badiou's ontology. Badiou offers us four routes towards the event: love, politics, mathematics and art. The second, politics, is perhaps the most intuitive, and also the one that reveals Badiou's political convictions: a history of true events is nothing other than the history of revolts and revolutions, beginning with Spartacus and ending with the Cultural Revolution in China. Here 'event' can be translated as 'revolutionary event'; periods of reaction, by contrast, are not events, but merely negative attempts to dilute the revolutionary effects of true events.
Among the four, mathematics is the most difficult, but also, for Badiou, the most crucial, philosophically speaking. Trained as a mathematician, Badiou has always sought to remind philosophy of its connection to mathematics. In this regard, too, Badiou follows Plato, who had identified mathematics as a stepping stone in the ascent from the cave to the realm of truth. Today's philosophy, for Badiou, has reversed Plato's preference for mathematics over poetry by installing poetry at the center of (Continental) language philosophy, most prominently so in the work of Heidegger (but also post-structuralism).[26] Badiou seeks to rectify this situation. From mathematics, Badiou takes his theory of multiples. Unlike Plato, with his insistence (at least in his middle period) on concrete universals, single ideas that are themselves sustained by the transcendent idea of the good, Badiou furnishes his worlds with multiples theorized with the help of Cantor's set theory. Here, the philosophical notion of the situation, which harbors multiples, finds its mathematical grounding, as does the argument why there are multiple worlds, not just one. Badiou's often technical use of mathematics has puzzled many readers (including this one), but for our purposes here suffice it to say that Badiou proposes an ontology of multiplicity that does without recourse to oneness and transcendence and remains instead on a plane of immanence.
Even though Badiou seeks to install mathematics at the center of philosophy and thus to reverse the dominance of poetry – and literature more generally – over philosophy, he does not want to give up on literature altogether. Indeed, the poem remains another path towards the event. It is surprising how closely Badiou follows Heidegger's reverence for poetry, his belief that through poetry the true language of being takes place above and beyond the degraded language of communication and everyday life. But where Heidegger finds in poetry the language of being, Badiou finds there the occurrence of an event. What he shares with Heidegger is the presumption that in poetry something happens, that the language of poetry is somehow truer – more revelatory – than non-poetic language, which also means that language manifests itself more fully in the poem than in other forms of speech. Avoiding the quasi-religious language of revelation, however, Badiou thinks of the poem as an event, as the moment when 'what there is' is being interrupted, when something new and strange enters a situation and radically alters it: an exceptional poem bears traces of an event.
The contrast with Heidegger is visible most clearly in Badiou's choice of master poet: instead of the late Romantic Friedrich Hölderlin, Badiou reveres the modernists Stéphane Mallarmé and Samuel Beckett. Badiou's admiration for Mallarmé stems in part from the poet's own regard for numbers and from his quasi-technical understanding of poetry as an 'operation'.[27] The most important poem, for Badiou, is the experimental "A Throw of Dice," in which Mallarmé arranges words on a page reminiscent of falling dice. By deviating from the regular poetic line, Marllarmé turns every word into an event just as the poem itself revolves around an event: a shipwreck. But even more central is the event that gives the poem its name, the throw of dice itself. A throw of dice creates an event; it distills what we might call an event to its essence. When we throw dice, we have defined the situation, a bet, into which an event will intrude by making a decision. After the throw, nothing will be the same; the event will have fundamentally altered the situation. Not only does Mallarmé produce an event with and through his poem, he also does so, according to Badiou, by crucially relying on absence, negation and the void. The shipwreck, in that sense, is only the ruse of an external event, not its essence, which resides in a peculiar quality of absence. In Badiou's parlance, an event takes place 'on the edge of the void' in close proximity with nothing (the title of his main book, Being and Event, echoes Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness). Badiou's ontology is not one of plenitude, but of a precarious relation to absence. Such absence is a recurring concern for Mallarmé, whose poems are fascinated by silence and, for the first time in modern poetry, by the blank space between the words. For Badiou, Mallarmé is thus the poet of subtraction and isolation, the representative of a modernism that seeks to reduce mimesis and expression, the traditional domain of poetry, to a minimum.[28] The eccentric arrangement of words on the page in "A Throw of Dice" might indeed be seen as a poetic rendering of Badiou's conception of multiples arranged on the edge of the void.
Situation, event, throw of dice – the terms of Badiou's discussion of Mallarmé have one thing in common: they are at home in the theater. Even though Badiou, following Heidegger, discusses Mallarmé under the general rubric of the poem, the more important category is in fact drama. In Being and Event he emphasizes at the outset that "A Throw of Dice" is dramatic (his emphasis) and that Mallarmé more generally "is the thinker of the event-drama".[29] In A Handbook of Inaesthetics he details more fully what kind of theater is at work in this extraordinary poet. Trying to specify what use Mallarmé makes of the theater, Badiou approaches a category that almost all philosophers interested in the theater encounter sooner or later: anti-theatricality. Mallarmé, the writer of the event-drama, as Badiou puts it, isn't he really an enemy of the theater?
Badiou approaches this question via the rival category of dance as a metaphor for thought. Noting the frequent opposition between dance and theater, Badiou sees a clear anti-theatrical turn in the work of the later Nietzsche, who attacks Richard Wagner with an anti-theatrical polemic and praises instead, via the figure Zarathustra, the superiority of dance. Mallarmé, with his interest in dance, seems to go a similar route – but not quite. Mallarmé, for Badiou, parts company with Nietzsche in that he installs a peculiar, purified, idealized theater at the center of his dramatic poetry.
Badiou avoids a conception of theater as mimesis and reads Mallarmé's monologue The Afternoon of a Faun as just such an anti-mimetic dramatization of the idea. This is another way of recognizing that Mallarmé has managed to install anti-theatricality at the center of his theater, creating an event drama in the manner of Plato, as I have detailed at greater length elsewhere.[30]
Behind Badiou's philosophy of the poem, we thus find a conception of Platonic theater. What are the contours of that conception? First of all, it asserts the centrality of the theater for thought. In The Century, Badiou observes that "the twentieth century is the century of the theatre as art," the century that witnessed the emergence of the theater and of the mise-en-scène as high art. In particular, Badiou is interested in the figure of the director, who has emerged as "a thinker of representation as such, who carries out a very complex investigation into the relationships between text, acting, space, and public".[31]
Badiou places the modern director at the center of theater because he wants to formulate an understanding of theater that emphasizes its connection to philosophy, or more precisely, to thought. The director, as he specifies in another short text on theater, assembles components, including text, acting, set design and music, but assembles them in a unique manner; this is why the theater can be called an event. The theatrical assemblage occurs only in the present, night after night, there, on the stage. Further, Badiou argues that due to this unique form of assemblage, the theater is capable of producing ideas. "This event – when it really is theater, the art of the theater – is an event of thought. This means that the assemblage of components directly produces ideas."[32] Since philosophical truth has the character of the event, it is the theater, the most eventful of the arts, that plays a central role in its formulation.
Badiou's most important text on theater to date is Rhapsody for the Theatre, published in 1990. As editor of Theatre Survey, I commissioned a translation of this short book into English; it appeared in its entirety in the autumn 2008 issue of Theatre Survey and can be accessed via Cambridge Journals Online.[33] It is in this book that Badiou spells out the theatrical dimension of his thought, and sums up his understanding of theater in the thesis that "All theatre is theatre of ideas".[34] Badiou here does not mean that theater fulfills merely a kind of pedagogical assumption, "distancing the Idea in the veil of representation".[35] Rather, it means returning theater to a Platonist conception of the idea, albeit an idea understood as event and therefore as something that must be understood dramatically.
Badiou's conception of theater as event also identifies the theater as the most political art form, the art form most closely tied to the state. This, of course, is especially true in France, with its tradition of national theater and generous state subsidies. Things could not be more different in the United States. But even if we allow for national difference, the essential relation between theater and the state posited by Badiou has a relevance for us as well, since it identifies the assembled public, the liveness of the theater event and the history of theater as crucial political categories. (Here and elsewhere Badiou contrasts the political nature of live theater with film, which cannot be political in the same way, and this preference for theater over film might be seen as yet another contrast with Deleuze, whose earlier interest in theater had given way to an engagement with film.) In order to preserve this character of the live assembly, Badiou also demands that theaters keep the practice of intermission, the moment when the audience can see and experience itself as audience rather than disappear, as it does in film, in the anonymity of the dark.
We can now see the contours of Badiou's theatrical philosophy. The poem is for him an 'event-drama', and this emphasis on the event ultimately leads him to think of the theater as the art form – or assemblage of existing art forms – that is the most directly tied to ideas. Like many theatrical philosophers before him, including Plato, Marsilio Ficino, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Søren Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Albert Camus and Sartre, Badiou also translated his dramatic philosophy into drama. Only recently have his plays begun appearing in English, despite having already acquired a (small) following in France. They are wide-ranging and witty, turning philosophical concepts into scenes and characters, including the figure of Ahmed, an Algerian immigrant around whom four of Badiou's plays revolve.[36] These plays also testify to the fact that Badiou's philosophy is not only dramatic, but actually veers towards drama itself. Badiou's work is an occasion for rethinking the relation between philosophy and theater; it is also itself an exemplar of this relation, a reminder of how fruitful the encounter between theater and philosophy can be.
[1] This article was originally published in Theatre Research International 34/3 (2009): 256-66. The editors of JBS warmly thank the journal, Cambridge University Press and Martin Puchner for their permission to reprint this essay with a newly composed authorial introduction.
[2] Martin Puchner, The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theatre and Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[3] Martin Puchner, "The Problem of the Ground: Martin Heidegger Site-Specific Performance," in Encounters in Performance Philosophy, ed. Laura Cull and Alice Lagaay (London: Palgrave, 2014), 65-86.
[4] Plato, Republic, books VI–X, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 119ff.
[5] Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
[6] Alexander Goehr, "Shadowplay" (Mainz: Schott, 1970).
[7] Howard Brenton, Bloody Poetry (London: French, 1985), 41.
[8] Peter Weir, The Truman Show, Paramount Pictures, 1998.
[9] Michel Foucault, Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres (1982-3), ed. Fredéric Gros et al. (Paris: Ehess, Seuil and Gallimard, 2008); Michael Foucault, Le Courage de la Vérité: Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres II (1984), ed. Fredéric Gros et al. (Paris: Ehess, Seuil and Gallimard, 2009); Michael Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001).
[10] Foucault, Le Gouvernement, 59.
[11] Alain Badiou, Conditions, with a preface by François Wahl (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992), 103 n. 15.
[12] Ibid., 77.
[13] Ibid., 307.
[14] Ibid., 75.
[15] Ibid., 77.
[16] Alain Badiou, Deleuze: Le Clameur de l'être (Paris: Hachette, 1997), 18, 26.
[17] Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
[18] Michel Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum," in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 165–97.
[19] Deleuze, Difference and Repetition.
[20] Badiou, Deleuze, 83.
[21] Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds: Being and Event 2, trans. Alberto Toscano (NY: Continuum, 2009 [2006]), 1; Martin Puchner, "Nothing but the Truths," Bookforum, April–May, 2009.
[22] Badiou, Logics of Worlds, 4.
[23] Badiou, Conditions, 318.
[24] Badiou, Logics of Worlds, 4.
[25] Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (London: Bloomsbury, 2013 [1998]).
[26] Badiou, Conditions, 163.
[27] Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, trans. Alberto Toscano (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 20.
[28] Badiou, Conditions, 108.
[29] Badiou, Being and Event, 191.
[30] Martin Puchner, Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-theatricality and Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
[31] Alain Badiou, The Century (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 40.
[32] Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, 72.
[33] Alain Badiou, "Rhapsody for the Theatre," trans. Bruno Bosteels, Theatre Survey 49/2 (November, 2008): 187-238.
[34] Ibid., 206.
[35] Ibid., 225.
[36] See Alain Badiou, Ahmed the Philosopher, trans. Joseph Litvak (NY: Columbia University Press, 2014).
Badiou, Alain, with preface by François Wahl. Conditions, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992.
Badiou, Alain. Deleuze: Le Clameur de l'être. Paris: Hachette, 1997.
Badiou, Alain. Handbook of Inaesthetics. Translated by Alberto Toscano. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Badiou, Alain. The Century. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.
Badiou, Alain. "Rhapsody for the Theatre." Translated by Bruno Bosteels. Theatre Survey 49.2 (November, 2008): 187–238.
Badiou, Alain. Logics of Worlds: Being and Event 2. Translated by Alberto Toscano. NY: Continuum, 2009.
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Translated by Oliver Feltham. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Badiou, Alain. Ahmed the Philosopher. Translated by Joseph Litvak (NY: Columbia University Press, 2014).
Barish, Jonas. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
Brenton, Howard. Bloody Poetry. London: French, 1985.
Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Foucault, Michel. "Theatrum Philosophicum." In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, 165-97. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.
Foucault, Michel. Fearless Speech. Edited by Joseph Pearson. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001.
Foucault, Michel. Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres (1982-3). Edited by Fredéric Gros et al. Paris: Ehess, Seuil and Gallimard, 2008.
Foucault, Michel. Le Courage de la Vérité: Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres II (1984). Edited by Fredéric Gros et al. Paris: Ehess, Seuil and Gallimard, 2009.
Goehr, Alexander. Shadowplay. Mainz: Schott, 1970.
Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Edited and with an introduction by Arnold I. Davison. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
Nehamas, Alexander. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Plato, Republic, books VI–X, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942.
Puchner, Martin. Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-theatricality and Drama, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Puchner, Martin. "Kenneth Burke: Theater, Philosophy, and the Limits of Performance." In Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Performance and Philosophy, edited by David Krasner and David Saltz, 41-56. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Puchner, Martin. "Nothing but the Truths." Bookforum, April–May, 2009.
Puchner, Martin. The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theatre and Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Puchner, Martin. "The Problem of the Ground: Martin Heidegger Site-Specific Performance." In Encounter in Performance Philosophy, edited by Laura Cull and Alice Lagaay, 65-86. London: Palgrave, 2014.
Reinelt, Janelle. "Theatre and Politics: Encountering Badiou." Performance Research Special Issue on Civility 9/4 (2004): 87–94.
Rokem, Freddie. "The Philosopher and the Two Playwrights: Socrates, Agathon, and Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium." Theatre Survey 49/2 (November, 2008): 239–52.
Weir, Peter. The Truman Show. Paramount Pictures, 1998.


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Read this tip to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Fender Flares and other Auto Accessories topics.
If you feel up to it, and you have about 3 hours to kill, you could deck out your pick-up with new fender flares on a Saturday morning. Just follow instructions, go easy on the brewskis, and you'll git er done easy. Start with the rear fender flare first. It comes in two pieces. You attach one part to the rear fender, and the other to the rear of the door panel. But hold on. You can't just whip out your ratchet and start installing. Before you start, you are going to need to remove, take off, and otherwise disassemble any factory parts that could interfere with the installation. This includes, but is not limited to the following: wheels, tires, the plastic plate at the bottom of the wheel-well, body side molding, fender trim, mud flaps, etc. Once you get the wheel and body trim off, you are ready to test fit the rear portion of the flare that attaches to the fender. Position it precisely where it is to be mounted. Using a grease pencil, make an outline of the part.
|Guru Spotlight
|Jennifer Mathes, Ph.D.

subset: commoncrawl


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Retiring from the College
Who is considered a retiree of Bowdoin College?
An employee who leaves employment of the College after they have completed at least fifteen years of continuous service in a regular benefits eligible position after reaching age 40 (and attaining age 55) is eligible to be considered a "retiree" of the College. Individuals who meet the above eligibility criteria and are considering retirement should arrange a meeting with Human Resources at their earliest convenience.
Please see the Retiree Benefits section in the Employee Handbook for more information.
How do retirees gain access to money they have saved in College Retirement Plans?
While working at Bowdoin you may have received contributions from the Bowdoin College 401(a) Retirement Plan with Fidelity Investments and/or you may have made contributions to a Supplemental 403(b) Retirement Account through American Century, Fidelity Investments and/or Vanguard.
Once you retire and employment has ended, you can access these accounts. To discuss your options and/or to initiate a transfer/withdrawal, please contact the appropriate retirement carrier listed above. They will assist you and provide you with the paperwork and instructions.
What other benefits are available to Retirees?
Retirees and their dependents already enrolled in the Bowdoin College Health Plan when the employee retires are eligible to enroll in the College's retiree medical plan.
Please see Leaving the College for information regarding all other benefits.
Who can be covered by the College's retiree medical plan?
Retirees and their dependents (who are already enrolled in one of the Bowdoin College Health Plans when the employee retires) are eligible to enroll in the College's retiree medical plan. If you are anticipating retirement, you should be sure to enroll eligible family members in coverage during the annual open enrollment prior to your intended retirement date because there is no opportunity to add family members to the retiree health plan at the time of your retirement or after retirement. In addition, if you decide to decline retiree medical coverage at the time of your retirement or you drop the coverage at a future date there is no option to reinstate the coverage going forward.
What retiree medical insurance is available to individuals under age 65?
Retirees under age 65 are eligible to elect coverage in one of the Bowdoin College Health Plans in our retiree group. Retirees pay the monthly rates in place for active employees using the highest rate tier for this coverage. If a family member remains on the under-age-65 health plan after the retiree reaches age 65, then the cost of the family member's coverage will increase to the full premium cost for the tier of coverage that they are enrolled in.
What retiree medical insurance is available to individuals age 65 and over?
Retirees age 65 and over are eligible to elect coverage by the Bowdoin College Retiree Health Plan - Medicare Supplement Plan F. To make this election an eligible individual must enroll in both Parts A and B of Medicare. For information about the different parts of Medicare, how to enroll, how to locate a local Social Security office and how to apply for Social Security benefits, please see http://www.ssa.gov and http://www.medicare.gov/. Medicare Supplement Plan F does not include prescription drug coverage. To obtain prescription drug coverage an individual must purchase a Part D plan of Medicare outside of Bowdoin. More information is available at http://www.medicare.gov/.
The college contributes $70 monthly toward the cost of Medicare Supplement Plan F for the retiree, while spouses are responsible for the full premium.


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Guys, the past couple days have been busy at work. I've only been able to follow the Kim Davis saga in bits and pieces as time and data rates have allowed. So I know that they locked up the county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue gay marriage licenses. But I got a question. How did they arrest her? Read more
Tag Archive for gay marriage
Why I Moved Out Of Boston
Two years ago, I moved my family out of Boston. At that time, if you had asked me why I quit my job and sold my house, I would have muttered something about money. It's true that Boston is expensive. But that's not the real reason I left. I moved out because of gay marriage. Boston, Massachusetts is the new Sodom and Gomorrah.
Right now some people are like, "Jimmy, what's a matter? You afraid of fire and brimstone?"
No, I'm not afraid of fire and brimstone. I'm afraid of the knock at the door. Read more
Who cares if Michael Sam is gay? (Answer: Liberals.)
So an openly gay man is going to play in the NFL. Yawn! Can you let me know when the NFL drafts a woman?
A lot of people wonder: Who cares if Michael Sam is gay? Does it make a difference if an NFL player is gay?
Well, let's not pretend a gay man hasn't been on a 53 man roster at some point in the league's history. But Michael Sam stands poised to become the first openly gay man. Unless a current player comes out of the closet before the draft, of course.
Rush Limbaugh even posed the question. Why do liberals make such a big deal of Michael Sam? And yesterday he asked it like a riddle. Why do liberals make a political issue out of homosexuality?
I'll answer that question just like I did last week concerning the push for amnesty. It's because the liberals, the democrats, and yes, even your president, all hate God.
You see, gay marriage has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with gender. God created gender and marriage. Liberals, prompted by their hatred for God, struggle to erase the distinctions between man and woman and in so doing, rid the fingerprints of God from creation.
Gay marriage in one fell swoop desecrates marriage and obliterates gender.
Gay marriage has nothing to do with sex.
To prove this point let's evaluate the claim that marriage discriminates against gays.
If that were true, when I went to marry Denise, the New York State court clerk would have required us to prove neither of us were gay before she granted our marriage license. As it was, we just applied as bride and groom. In fact, she didn't even ask who was the bride and who was the groom.
Gay marriage doesn't discriminate against straights either. When two men apply for their marriage license at Boston city hall, they are not required to prove their homosexuality. Good thing. It's tough enough walking through that nightmarish building without seeing gay public displays of affection.
All gay marriage does is abolish the legal acknowledgement of gender. But why?
Look at page one of the Bible. What refrain is repeated on day 6 of creation? "Male and female, he created them." Do you see that God created gender? Every creature that swims, flies, or crawls on the earth is either male or female.
God took special steps to create man. Then from him took extra ordinary steps to make woman. She's the jewel of creation. The union between man and his woman is described this way: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and the two will become one flesh."
Marriage. What a thing of mysterious beauty. It's God who set Love in motion. Who can be against it?
Liberals. They hate it. It's unequal and therefore unfair.
Why should it be that only a man and a woman can have such deep, spiritual, intimate union? Why can't two men or two women? Following this delusion, liberals hijack our government and direct it full steam against the brick wall of God's reality.
God is unfair.
If men and woman are different and unequal things are unfair, then God in creating gender is unfair.
But wait, it gets worse. Ever hear the phrase "the weaker sex?" It comes from the Bible. In Peter's first epistle. Open your eyes to the fact that men are stronger than women.
What is the best, most incontrovertible example of this inequality of strength between man and woman?
Women in the NFL.
No women play in the NFL. No woman has ever played in the NFL. No woman ever will.
The physical demands of the job lay light years beyond what a woman is physically capable of enduring.
Could a woman play football? I mean, yea, uhh, I guess. She could hold a football and run with it. But each roster spot in the NFL pays at minimum $285,000. With all the millions of dollars at stake and the chance to achieve athletic glory and acclaim, the men who play in the NFL are the cream of the cream of all athletes in the world — and even human history.
And the women are on the sideline cheering them on.
Consider Sebastian Vollmer. 6'8″ 320 lbs. 37″ standing vertical leap. He benched 225 lbs 32 times on Pro Day. Originally from Germany, he emigrated to the USA to ultimately play for the New England Patriots. He has a base salary of $17 million over the next four years playing in the NFL.
With that kind of money, where's the 320 lb woman vying for his job? Well, if a chick weighs that much, she isn't doing much jumping. The only thing she's pressing is ham paninis.
Is there some grand conspiracy to keep women out of the NFL? Yes. And the conspirator is sitting on a throne in heaven.
The Super Bowl championship for Liberals would be for a woman to play in the NFL. But the nature of reality keeps defeating their delusional aspirations time after time after time.
So they are left holding a consolation prize. An AFC championship of sorts.
An openly gay player in the NFL. Is that remarkable? Yes. But is it a championship victory? No. Sam is not a woman, he's just a gay man.
Liberals are the Buffalo Bills of undermining God's creation.
The Most Chilling Words Spoken By Obama. Ever.
You would think President Barack Obama would be happy after the debt deal ended the government shutdown. After all, he humiliated the Republicans, who submitted to his will and painfully gave in to his demands. No. You thought wrong. In a news conference today, Obama angrily uttered the most chilling words.
He said, "something something something … don't listen to blogs, Fox News, or talk radio."
Was this chilling because the president used his influence to curb free speech? No.
Was it chilling because of the suggestion he'd use his office to intimidate his political opponents? No. I'm not at all surprised by that anymore.
Was it chilling because the president obviously doesn't have any clear policy objectives, he just wants to destroy one opponent after the other?
No! Look. I'm going to tell you why it's chilling if you stop asking all these questions.
Read more
Gay Marriage is Wrong
It's amazing that the same society that bases itself on Science is too stupid to tell the difference between a woman's vagina and a man's anus. But here we are handing out marriage licenses so men can legally sodomize each other. No. Gay marriage is wrong.
Our government cares so much about its population that it controls what we eat and smoke. Yet the government disregards the fact that sodomy's participants enter the diaper years early on in life. Can Obamacare really afford to pay for diapers for middle aged gay men?
To the liberals here in America, this is hate speech. Yet this alludes to ancient words in the Bible. Are you trying to say the Holy Bible is hate speech? Read more
I love another man. We're getting married.
With all of this talk about gay marriage, I think it's time I come out of the closet and admit that I love another man.
Read more
Why I Hate " 'Health' 'Food' "
Christian America suffers three great follies. Actually there are four, but I have not revealed the fourth one yet.
The first folly is health food. Or as I call it, " 'health' 'food' ". It isn't healthy, and it isn't food.
Some Christians are a little bit bothered by this, thinking that I'm looking for some sort of salvation based on Twinkies. Well, that's not the case. There's nothing that you can put in your mouth and chew that will save you, except for the bread of life, of course.
The reason I believe this is because I love Jesus, and I revere his Word. That's where my hatred for the foolishness of health food comes from. If you want to take a Bible journey with me to understand this, then turn to page 852.
Read more


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The Stamina 15-0200 is unique among the recumbent exercise bikes we have researched as it is a folding recumbent bike. As such it may be an ideal choice for people looking for all the benefits of a recumbent exercise bike but do not have the room for some of the other models which can take up quite a bit of space. It is a relatively cheap option for a recumbent exercise bike retailing at around $150 – $250 mark. Click here to check the price of the newer model Stamina 4825 or read on to see if its folding design choice had any disadvantages.
Obviously this recumbent bike's unique feature is its folding option as detailed above. It also features a semi recumbent design so if you are looking for a fully recumbent exercise bike to maximize impact on your knees or back this might not be for you.
Its other key features are:
- Unique Folding design
- Sturdy steel frame with Cushioned seat and seat back and slide-resistant footpads
- Multifunction LCD monitor
- Adjustable resistance system to vary workout difficulty
- Adjustable seat fits various user heights
- Measures 42 x 41 x 25 inches (W x H x D)
- Max user weight of 250 lbs
- Semi recumbent design
User Reviews
This bike currently has over 140 user reviews on Amazon with an average star rating of 4 out of 5 stars. Clearly there is a lot of satisfied users of this model. A review of all the feedback shows the majority of users loved the ability to fold the machine up and put it away after use and didn't think this design impacted on the quality or stability of the machine. The wheels on the base also meant it could easily be pushed around once folded away- making it easy to transport. Buyers also commented on how quiet the machine operation was.
Also, there were a few negative points raised by users that potential users should be aware of including reports that taller persons may find it cramped to use and the seat is less comfortable than some other models. It also needs to be highlighted that some of the older reviews have talked about missing parts or damaged components in the bikes shipped to them but this is not mentioned in the newer reviews so this issue it seems to have been rectified
The vast majority of buyers found the it to be a well built, study machine that was great value for money and an ideal choice for users looking for the all the benefits of a recumbent exercise bike with the space saving benefits its unique folding design offered. However it does not provide the level of resistance of some other machines so may not be suitable for the more experienced user. Nevertheless we have no hesitation in recommending it for those looking for an alternative to bulky standard recumbent exercise bikes or looking a great value beginners model.
We hope this review was useful for you. If you want any more information on this exercise bike please click here to read all recumbent bike reviews and check out the latest price.


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Shopbop Buy More Save More Sale
November 24, 2015 by jasmine
Filed under Fashion Tips & Finds
~ Shopbop Buy More Save More Sale ~
I don't know about you, but I'm ready to eat some trukey and get some real shopping done!! I love that a lot of stores are getting a head start on all the Black Friday deals. Shop bop will be kicking things off with a buy more, save more sale that's perfect for a family and friends group purchase (see details below). The sale began today at 7am ET and will end at 11:59pm PT on November 30th. Happy shopping and make sure to check back often because I will be updating with my favorite shopping deals.
****Brand exclusion may apply. For more info visit Shopbop.com
image via Shopbop
Shopbop Friends & Family Event 25% Off
October 13, 2015 by jasmine
Filed under Found & Loved
~ Shopbop Friends & Family Event 25% Off~
Want to add some new fall favorites to your wardrobe? Well you're in luck because Shopbop is at again with its Friends and Family Sale. Click here for more details.
For three days take 25% off your orders using code INTHEFAM25. Check out some of my favorites below!
Free People Tunic | Snow Bunny Top | Denim Jacket
Black Leggings | Oxblood Leggings | BB Dakota Jacket | Booties
Sale begins at 12:00AM U.S. Eastern time Tuesday the 13th
Offer ends October 15, 2015, at 11:59pm PT.
Disclosure: "Fashiongrail.com occasionally receives vendor/brand sponsorships for selecting and mentioning brands but the opinions expressed herein are those of the author."
Seven New Ways To Wear Stripes + Must Have Pieces To Get The Look
April 27, 2015 by jasmine
Filed under Boys on the Side
Stripes is the classic pattern that never go out of style and they effortlessly scream summer! Below is some inspiration and must have pieces.
Must Have Pieces To get These Looks:
Stripes Bermuda Shorts **Perfect with a crips white top | Striped Hoodie **Pair with bright shorts and oxfords | Basic Striped Tee ** Use it to layer over or under just about anything | Striped Blazer **Wear with white jeans & sneakers for a effortless look | Striped Linen Shorts **Try these with a muscle shirt & denim button up | Striped Cap **Perfect for the beach! | Striped Jersey Tank **Pair with some red and you've got the perfect Fourth of July outfit | Striped trousers **the pants to wear on a hot summer night out | Suede Cole Haan Slip Ons **Dress up your stripes with a comfy pair of shoes that go with all your summer looks.
Disclosure: Fashiongrail.com occasionally receives vendor/brand sponsorships for selecting and mentioning brands or products in the Boys On The Side Section but the opinions expressed herein are those of the author.
Justin Timberlakes Trench Coat Look for Less!
February 15, 2015 by jasmine
Filed under Boys on the Side
~ See the last look for less here.
Justin Timberlakes 2009 GQ outfit clearly shows how classic styles never go out of style. His high-top Pumas and skinny jeans give his trench the perfect urban feel, while his sleek tie completes the look. A great way for sneaker enthusiasts to look more polished and still wear sneakers.
Trench: Invest or for Less | Black Skinny Jeans | Sneakers: Hightop or Lowtop | White Shirt | Black Tie
East Dane Big Sale Event Is On!
November 25, 2014 by jasmine
Filed under Boys on the Side
Kick off the holiday season with Easy Dane's BIGGEST sale of the year! The sale begins today, November 25 at 7am (U.S. Eastern Time) through Monday, December 1 at 11:59 (U.S. Pacific Time). There will be no brand exclusions and will include full and sale price items. Shop big because the more you spend the better the savings! See below for details and some must-have items to gift yourself or loved ones. Check out some favorites and how much you can save below!
East Dane Sale Details:
15% off orders of $250+
20% off orders of $500+
24% off orders of $1000+
For more info and sale codes click here
Disclosure: "Fashiongrail.com occasionally receives vendor/brand sponsorships for selecting and mentioning brands or products in the Boys On The Side Section but the opinions expressed herein are those of the author."
Leopard Heels Three Ways
October 28, 2014 by admin
Filed under Fashion Tips & Finds
For a date night look I went with all black. This outfit can easily be worn for a lot of my upcoming holiday events.
In my third and favorite look I wore a long sleeve mini dress and an army green vest. It's perfect for a casual weekend or even a casual day at work with some tights.
How would you style these leopard print beauties for fall?
Disclosure: Compensation was provided by DSW via Mode Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of DSW.
Back To School With Shop Bop & East Dane
August 26, 2014 by admin
Filed under Fashion Tips & Finds
School is back in session in Florida, but for those lucky ones still on summer break you can shop at Shopbop and East Dane Back to School collections that are filled tons of stylish picks! Check out some of my favorites below and to see the whole collection at Shop Bop click here and for East Dane's collection click here
Black Marc Jacobs Zeta Jacket | Free People Gauzy Plaid Top | NSF Raglan Tee | Herschel Supply Co Backpack | Madewell Booties | Superga Sneaks
Obey Polka Dot Hoodie | RVCA Cloud Tee | J Brand Jeans | Vince Raglan Sweater | Master Piece Backpack | Marshall Headphones
Trend For Less: Pearls
July 7, 2014 by admin
Filed under Accessories
When I was little, every time I saw my mom put on a strand of pearls I immediately thought she was going somewhere fancy. I always thought it was a bummer that something so pretty had to be saved for a special night and her response was always the same, "what do I need pearls for when I'm in jeans running errands every day?" That pretty much shaped what I thought of pearls for most of my adult life – pearls are too fancy for every day use.
That's definitely not the case anymore. In the past couple of months the pearl has been popping up everywhere in a much edgier way. Chanel debuted its choker with massive sized pearls and Christian Dior came out with gorgeous double sided pearl studs. Looking to add some pearls to your every day looks? Look for styles with more details like studs and chains. Pair them with your favorite jeans and tees or stick to a little black dress and add the updated strand of pearl.
7 Stylish Stocking Stuffers Under $25
December 17, 2013 by admin
Filed under Accessories
Stylish stocking stuffers under $25!
A girl can never have to many lip glosses or lip balms. These adorable lip balm balls by Twist & Pout are only $3.99. They leave lips silky smooth and make a great key chain for the holidays.
For more info visit – Twistandpout.com
This stylish phone case has a removable strap that turns into a fun cuff. Tons of styles to choose from and only $25.
Visit – DavidandYoung.com for more info
I love to have some perfume handy all the time and these scented pencil gift set is perfect to slip into any bag. Comes in a set with four different frangrances.
Available at meetmark.com
Check your makeup and write a to do list all at once with this glam memo pad gift set for only $9.99.
More info here at Avon.com
Who doesn't love a cute phone case? Here's another one of my favorite cases for only $9.99 at Forever21.com.
Camera Pro Phone Case – $9.99 at Forever21.com
This faux fur scarf is slighty larger than most stocking stuffers but it will definitely be a hit! Roll it up and tie it up with a pretty headband for extra glam.
Faux Fur Scarf – $24
Classic red polish will be loved by any fashionista.
Butter London Bed Red – $19 at Lulus.com
Top 5 Gifts for The Beauty Lovers
December 10, 2013 by admin
Filed under Accessories
I find that my beauty product lovers are the easiest and most fun to shop for. They're always open to trying out new things and there's a TON of options in all sorts of price ranges. However it can also be a bit daunting because you don't just want to wrap up a tube of lipstick; so being creative is a challenge BUT fun! In comes one of my favorite stores: ULTA. It's like Disneyland for me and when I go in there I spend at least 2 hours looking at their enormous range of products and sometimes I even get my makeup done if I have the time. Last weekend I headed in to my local ULTA to get a little holiday shopping done and it was even more fun than usual. They had tons of holiday gift sets, great price ranges and they were giving a free robe when you spend over $50 in perfumes – score! Now I didn't have a huge list of gifts to buy from ULTA so I had the opportunity to really splurge on the lucky ones and got to gift myself a few goodies. Check out my top 5 picks below and make sure to check out ULTA's holiday gift list for more ideas.
For those who are tired of battling frizz the Holiday All That Glitters Ultra Chi Flat Iron is perfect! I love this flat iron and have been using it for quite some time. It cuts down the straightening process in half and you can even curl your ends with it. The glittery flat iron is fun and a must have in any woman's hair accessories.
Chi All That Glitters Flat Iron
Makeup junkies will love these adorable Naught and Nice bags that can be filled with Mariah Carey's new Opi nail polishes as a bonus gift.
Naughty & Nice Bags | Mariah Carey's Opi Nail Polishes
One of my favorite makeup sets to gift was the Vice 2 Urban Decay's limited edition eye platte. It's a great addition to any makeup collection. A perfect bonus would be Benefits Cosmetics They're Real Mascara. I snagged a tube while I was there and it's insane how long they make your eyelashes look – a must have!
Vice 2 Urban Decay Eye Palatte
Benefit Cosmetics They're Real Mascara
One of the goodies that I picked for myself was the Clarisonic Mia 2. I needed this SO bad! My skin has been horrible and dull this season that not even my normal face routine was cutting it. I gave this baby a try and boom my face literally felt cleaner and looked more refreshed and even healthier.
Every girl loves to get perfume and I love Marc Jacobs' Honey and use it as my day time go to perfume. When I saw it in the front aisle I jumped at one of the last two boxes left! Sweet perfume and bottle.
There you have it my top 5 gift picks from Ulta. Happy shopping!
ULTA Beauty is not just another store for holiday shopping; it's an exciting wonderland of beauty products that make great gifts, stocking stuffers and personal treats. This year, ULTA is filled with a dazzling variety of holiday treasures that are sure to delight your friends, family, loved ones, and even yourself!
Compensation was provided by ULTA Beauty via Glam Media. The opinions shared are my own and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of ULTA Beauty.


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• Customizable colors and exercise icons
• Display total and interval remaining time
• Display custom interval icon and name
• Interval name with voice feedback
• Countdown beep
• Play sound on interval finish. (Sound customizable)
• Display stopwatch when timer is paused
• Editable warm up and cooldown times
• Works in background
• Nice material design with animations
If you find any bug, or get a Force Close please email me at email@example.com with android version, app version and device.
Suggestions are welcome too ;)
Enjoy the app and NEVER GIVE UP with your training!


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Prime minister lays into arts chiefs
October 2, 2009 by Norman Lebrecht
At the memorial service for Geoffrey Tozer in Melbourne, former prime minister Paul Keating slammed past directors of the Sydney and Melbourne symphony orchestra for deliberate and malicious neglect of the country's most gifted pianist. 'This malevolence more or less broke Geoffrey's heart,' he said, adding that the saga was a prime instance of 'bitchiness and preference within the arts in Australia.'
Keating has written an article to the same effect in the Sydney Morning Herald, while the Age of Melbourne carries a full text of the speech under the headline 'Indifference to Tozer's genius is a disgrace' – perhaps to make amends for its own disgraceful silence over Tozer's death.
I endorse and applaud every word of Keating's eulogy. Australia failed its greatest pianist and little has been done to put the arts on a more professional footing that might prevent such waste and injustice in the future – witness only what is happening now in Melbourne's chamber music hall. I have said it in Australia and I say it here again: the arts in that country need a Royal Commission – an independent assessment of assets and future strategy.
Meanwhile, let's not lose sight of the precedent of an elected leader attacking orchestral administration for bias, ineptitude and flagrant favouritism. Can we hear it now from the Mayors of Philadelphia and New York? Berlin, too, should take note.
Good on yer, Paul.
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Comments (5)
Let's not overplay the Keating angle here! Many of your readers will not know his style, although it sure is there for all to see: "The kind of loss people felt when Germany lost Dresden." This is Keating hyperbole at its best. Sadly it says more about Keating than it does about Tozer. Your readers should also note that Keating has not been prime minister since 1996, and even when he was, his arts ministers (Kelly, Lee and McMullen) were mostly remembered for their other portfolio achievements. Commending past leaders for taking the arts establishments of the past to task may be all very well, but it achieves little. Keating plays the angry man very well indeed, but he is no longer our "elected leader".
You also sell the Australian arts scene a little short. Arts administration in Australia is certainly not as unprofessional as you imply. The music scene is actually quite vibrant. And while an assessment of assets and strategy may well be a valuable exercise, the last thing needed is a Royal Commission.
NL replies: I'm familiar with Paul Keating's history, his hyperbole and his inventive use of profanity. He is, however, in my view, absolutely right in this instance. I recognise the symptoms he describes and agree that they cry out for treatment.
While JohnofOZ may be right in saying that Arts Administration in australia can be very professional, I think he unintentionally highlights the entire problem with Australian culture: that the focus is almost entirely on artistic administration and not the art or artists itself. I believe it is symptomatic of a culture of over governance. Three tiers of government for 22 million people? Of course the culture created by such a structure will inevitably become edifice and administration heavy. Australia is one of the most over-curated cultures in the world. Curators, Assessment Panels, Artistic Directors, Artistic Administrators, Creative Producers…. but rarely does the artist appear forefront, and almost always filtered. The artist is never approached for what they might wish to create, but rather how they might ft the frame. Therefore the work that is produced is already tamed, shaped to fit an illusory market for trading works as soft diplomacy, an abhorrent agenda for creation and one that is arguably outmoded already.
Further one must note the extraordinary demand by practicing artists on the exceptionally small pool of funding available for independent work (of course panel/pier assessed) which is sometimes as little as a 12% success rate in any given category, and never more than 30%. The richest cash composition commission (which has incidentally just been discontinued by the philanthropic organisation) was a mere $AUD 80,000 – but over a two year period, metered out like benefit cheque. The average wage in Australia is about $52,000 per annum. The value of art and artist in Australia is so low, and it really is the role of government to structure the delivery of culture to (and by, let us not forget artists are people too) its citizens.
I feel artists themselves need to lead this change, as one cannot ever simply hand victory over to people. But it seems unlikely in the current climate, and by the way artists are educated and shaped, and the very tangible fear of persecution for speaking out that a grand revolution is close at hand. There is a punitive thread that runs through arts bureaucracy everywhere, and artists, those like myself who rely on the tiniest of grants from these people, do well to be cautious. My mouth has cost me a lot over the years, but my work stands tall. I am far more careful now, although even writing this my neck tingles a little nervously.
Having been active in arts governance in Australia I know that that approaching cultural change through policy is glacial. As a composer, I have really had to pull back form these activities lest my practice become a secondary consideration.
But Keatings call is valid. A ROYAL commission though reads too much of an imperial approach. I would much prefer for Keating, on his government pension, to lead an entirely more rogue approach – create a new form of structural inquiry from within the culture rather than external and one loaded with historiographical weight. Mister Keating might be best to gather artists around him and tool them up to storm the castle. I for one, would be happy to join such a team.
David Chisholm
Many fine artists are neglected in their home country. I am sure there's at least one that can say this everywhere. Why, I have never played with the orchestra in the region I am from, and have to hustle diligently to make sure I can put food on the table. Most people cannot believe it. In the case of Geoffrey Tozer, he had the Prime Minister speaking up for him–although too late. In my case, I don't believe there's a dignitary that is even aware that I or my esteemed colleagues exist. My advice to artists everywhere: don't wait your life away expecting others to recognize your talents. You have a voice–make sure it gets heard, or you will fall into the cracks of history. Make a difference; create new ideas and projects; leave a legacy–don't wait for the world to 'find you'.
I sense a more endemic cultural problem: a fear of elitism that often leads to the derision of ambition other than in a narrow band of accepted professions.
In his public endorsement of the arts during his premiership, Keating pursued adulthood for the nation. Yet, we are still adolescents (and we're not dancing to Stravinsky) We bleed classical musicians overseas, and those who remain are stuck in a humiliating social discourse of self-deprecation, or creating inoffensive Australiana. Cultural signs trump content, and no one is challenged.
I await the next Prime Minister, who mourns pianists who played written-down music; who attends Mahler concerts, much less cries at the end of them. Until that day I will be wailing with Mr Keating.


text: Colleen O'Brien is a fiction writer and poet living in Columbia, Missouri. Her poetry manuscript, Spool in the Maze, won the DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press chapbook contest and was published in 2015. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in The Antioch Review, Kenyon Review Online, North American Review, Denver Quarterly, and West Branch, among others. She teaches creative writing and composition at Westminster College.


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2012 Rastaban Pinot Noir
Chris Blanchard, MS
I love the red floral notes on this wine; rose petals and hibiscus, slightly meaty like prosciutto and shaved parmesan, violets and rosemary with a high note of candied cherry Ludens cough drops. Red plum, mirin and sesame oil, rhubarb, cranberry and strawberry with a touch of wild herbs. Delicious texture, crazy red cherry finish and beautiful balanced acidity. Such a crowd pleaser.
I would do this with tea roasted duck and cherries, Chinese food would rock with this, any classic favorites would be amazing.
Vintage: 2012
Vineyard: Brooks Estate
AVA: Eola – Amity Hills
Date Planted: 1973 – 2001
Soil Type: Jory
Elevation: 650-750'
Exposure: Southeast Facing
Clones: Pommard, 115 & 777
Farming Method: Biodynamic
Irrigation: None
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Time in Barrel: 18 months in French Oak
Date Bottled: July 3, 2014
Date Released: May, 2015
Alcohol: 13.3%
Case Production: 300
Suggested Retail: $55
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text:
I don't even like spaghetti... But I like to articulate my thoughts. Be it from a dark place or somewhere whimsical.
I don't even like spaghetti... But I like to articulate my thoughts. Be it from a dark place or somewhere whimsical.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Poor Garry, kitty
I'm very sad writing this. For those of you that don't know Garry (full name Giarraputo) is my "old man cat" also known as Garry-puko. I have had him since I was 17. He used to sit on the edge of the bathtub and watch me shower and stuff- which is why I started calling him man-cat. He was kind of a pervert, I think.
He was given to me by my ex-mil because she and I are kindred spirits in the cat loving world. His mom's name was Baby and Baby was a very smallish cat and ran out once and got knocked up. We don't know who Garry's father is. Probably a taco cat. Taco cats were the tiger-stripey male cats that hung around outside at the time Baby got her taste of freedom. Now from what the kids tell me there are Oreo cats (my ex-mil would feed the strays and drop off's as she lives out in the boonies). So anyway she told me I could have whatever kitten I wanted out of the litter and she would keep it for me until I moved out on my own and could have cats. Baby had 1 kitten. Garry. Garry is an only kitten. Pick o' the litter.
So I had a normal cat name for him. I don't remember what it was and Mark's brother renamed him Giarraputo, after Jack Giarraputo the movie guy. And that stuck, obviously.
So anyway Garry went on one of his puking rampages he does sometimes and went at it for about the last 3 days. I figure he'd be on the mend and told Kirby we should really consider getting old man cat food instead of the all ages cat food we currently buy.
Garry started acting funny, he puked in the kitchen and I held him down. He likes to freak out and run and hence spray vomit all over. He didn't fight me... okay that was weird. So later I was treadmilling it up and he started crying. He had continued through the day to cry off and on. I feel bad cuz I shoo'd him away thinking he was going to wake the napping baby. When he was around he wasn't really that active and he started hiding. I noticed his vomit (after the kitchen one) was really foamy bile stuff. Not good. I picked him up (he is a very small kitty 7lbs at most) he felt so light and bony.
Anyway I'm so worried for him. He's curled up under the baby's bed and purrs when I pet him. My mom thinks I should take him to the vet, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to put him to sleep. I don't want him hurting or miserable. If I go to the vet and we have to put him to sleep I'm afraid I won't be able to even drive home!
Everyone keeps telling me he is old... Well he is old, but not THAT old. He's about 13 1/2. Which is only about 65 human years. I don't know what I'm going to do. That cat has been my constant vomiting companion. Millie will be so sad, too. She has known him all her life. The reason we got Millie is because I didn't want Garry to be lonely when we worked all the time.
Anyway I don't want to start crying thinking about it. I hope Garry snaps out of it. My mom has a foster kitty, Kiki. She said I could foster it if I wanted... I just don't know. I always said once Garry kicked the bucket I wasn't getting anymore cats! But I figured Garry'd be around for another 3 years or more. I hope so.
2 comments:
hi, I hope I can remember how to do this. If I have to remember a password, I'm in trouble. I'm snooks36 from the aol cafe board that found out about Rob, via your blog. Anyway came back to visit cause I love reading your blogs, but was saddened to hear about your Garry. I am a devout cat lover from the git go. Just give that baby your love, and use your judgment as to whether he is in pain or not. And remember all those wonderful years you gave him what he needed...a loving home. If and when Garry goes over the rainbow bridge, you can decide THEN whether you are ready for another luv kitty.
I'm 75 and already worried about if I don't outlive my Funny Face Callie who is a feral baby from feral momma and daddy, who will take good care of her. She is only 9 years old, so maybe we have a few more years together.
- Spaghetti Fields said...
Thanks for the comment. Good news- he is still acting really off, but when I pet him he purrs and he has gotten around. I gave him some soft food and he has eaten most of what I gave him (Millie didn't even come to steal it until he was done- I think she knows). He also went in the garage to drink. He's been sitting on the kitchen rug by the heater.
I didn't take him to the vet. I'm afraid they are going to tell me I have to put him to sleep... or give him some expensive medicine I can't afford. Garry always pukes a lot- since kittenhood. Just a nervous stomach. But he seems content now, and I don't think he's completely miserable like yesterday with his crying and hiding (I just caught him trying to go under the sink a minute ago). If it comes down to it and I don't think there is a hope and I think he is in pain- I will do the right thing. For now he's coming back around and hopefully he'll give me some more good years. He really is a super cat.


text:
ProSieben Q2 figures show signs of recovery
Shares soar as net profit up nearly 64% to $96 millionCOLOGNE, Germany -- The bounce back has begun in the European TV market, if strong quarterly figures by pan-European giant ProSiebenSat.1 are any indication.
Net profit shot up nearly 64% to $96 million (€74.5 million) and revenues increased almost 10% to $984 million (€760.6 million) at the group from April through June this year.
The recovery at ProSieben, which operates free- and pay TV channels in 14 European territories, mirrors the rest of the Euro TV market and appears to be picking up steam. Q1 figures at the group showed a 5% revenue increase.
Forecasts suggest the second half of the year could be even stronger. In ProSieben's core German market, the Federation of German Industries today said it expects the economy to grow by around 2% in 2010, after falling 3.5% last year.
German free-TV revenues at ProSieben were up 8% at $595 million (€459.7 million) but the KKR and Permira-controlled media conglom also saw sales growth in its free-TV operations outside Germany -- where revenue was up 10% at $265 million (€205 million) and in its diversification business, which saw a 14% sales jump to $124 million (€96.1 million) in Q2.
ProSieben also trimmed its debt by about $200 million to a still hefty $4.2 billion (€3.3 billion).
Investors took the figures as a sign the recovery of the European ad market is well underway. ProSieben shares were up more than 10% Monday to €13.73 ($17.77).


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While it was all about female empowerment, strangely with a male leader, at the office on "Up All Night" (Thu., 9:30 p.m. EST on NBC), it was about rediscovering manliness at home. Particularly for Chris and Reed (returning guest star Will Forte), who decide to take it upon themselves to rebuild the motorcyle Reed's Uncle Wolf left him. Not that either of them were ever manly enough for a motorcyle in the first place.
They proved this right off by buying ridiculous riding outfits instead of the tools they'd set out to buy in order to actually fix up the machine. In fact, it may have never been fixed up were it not for the timely arrival of another neighbor, Gene, who surprised them both with his motorcycle knowledge.
But fixing up the bike proved the limits of his willingness to participate in their fantasy. In fact, actually riding the bike was daunting enough that the men fought over it, until Reed decided to do it to honor his uncle. He made it about five feet before crashing at the end of the driveway. Had Reagan not called Chris crying from work, he may have never mustered up the nerve to ride.
As it was, he charged in to the rescue where he really wasn't needed. That said, having their idol Yvonne Encanto on hand to help usher in Ava's 5th anniversary on the air turned out to be anything but. After a quick pep talk that worked far better than it should have, they were left in the hands of her right-hand man Luke (Steven Pasquale, "Rescue Me").
Only those proved the wrong hands for dealing with Reagan and Ava during a very stressful and emotional time for them. Ava in particular was distressed -- as were fans of Jason Lee -- by the abrupt departure of Kevin from her life and the series. Their relationship was developing so nicely, it was quite a shock to hear offhandedly that he'd suddenly moved to Idaho.
It's not exactly clear if Luke is here to stay, but after a seemingly pointless power struggle with Reagan, he seemed to decide he respected her and basically let her run the show her own way, making his continuing presence rather unnecessary and pointless. The friction and tension he brought to the office seemed resolved by the end.
Catch new episodes of "Parks & Recreation" every Thursday at 9:30 p.m. EST on NBC.
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